Propaganda…

We all think we know what propaganda is but until I saw the show on PBS entitled “The Brain with Brian Eagleman” did I understand just how invasive it is. Propaganda allows us to do very dark things that we never imagined possible.

Here is a quote from the episode “Why Do I Need You”.

But there is a darker side. For every “in group” there is an “out group”. Dr. Eagleman’s labs has show that belonging to an “in group” means that at an unconscious level our brains care less about members of the “out group. He journeys to modern day Bosnia to hear an eyewitness about what happened in 1995 when genocide returned to Europe. What could have allowed for such horrific group on group violence? Dr. Eagleman believes that neurosciences offers important answers. Dr Lasana Harris t Leiden University has discovered that there are certain circumstances under which the human brain stops perceiving others as human, and when we perceive others as less than human it’s easier to ignore them, and its easier to suspend the moral and social rules we normally live by.

Besides so effectively causing terror in us, ISIL is very effective with propaganda. There are literally thousands of people to go to Syria each year because it seemingly offer relief to their empty lives. The vast majority of these come from the Middle East and North Africa; the U.S. accounts for only a very small minority of those disenchanted souls.

Propaganda, and the corresponding lack of other information, is what keeps North Korea in the insane condition it is in where a young demigod dictator can rule over so many millions of otherwise sane people.